Arts & Culture | Theater

A Nun With A Jewish Touch

03/06/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

She brought a mystical Jewish strain into her career in the Church and gave comfort to many converts from Judaism who struggled to maintain a connection to Jewish belief and practice. Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century saint whose grandfather was forced to renounce his Jewish identity by the Spanish Inquisition, never lost touch with her Jewish roots. In Begonya Plaza’s new play, “Teresa’s Ecstasy,” starring the playwright, the nun’s Jewish heritage is seen as a driving force in her life and work.

‘Flight’ From The Past

02/28/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

Can a child be liberated from his or her parent’s traumatic past? In Michel Wallerstein’s new play, “Flight,” the relationship between a Holocaust survivor and her son is warped by her unwillingness to talk about what she suffered during the war. As his mother begins to slide into dementia, her son finds himself running out of time to unlock the secrets buried deep inside his mother.

Win Some, Lose Some At Oscars

02/28/2012 | Los Angeles (JTA) | Theater

Jewish director Michel Hazanavicius won top honors at the Oscars for “The Artist,” while Israel’s entry in the awards, “Footnote” by Joseph Cedar, lost to an Iranian film.

“The Artist,” a black-and-white homage to Hollywood’s silent film era, won five Oscars — for best picture, director, actor, costume design and original musical score — at the ceremony Sunday.

GPS As Prophet

02/21/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

What if our machines started talking back? In Eddie Antar’s new comedy, “The Navigator,” an omniscient GPS dispenses solutions to an unemployed man’s financial and marital woes. The play, which was nominated for eight Off-Off-Broadway theater awards last year (and won two) has been remounted at the WorkShop Theater Company near Penn Station. Jonathan Mandell of Back Stage called it a “clever, cautionary comedy about our tech-dependent era.”

Paradise Lost

02/14/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

When last we saw Eve Adams, the intrepid Jewish bookseller at the center of Barbara Kahn’s play, “The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams,” she was under arrest. The charge was selling “obscene” novels by Henry Miller and Anais Nin, from her Jazz Age lesbian speakeasy and tearoom in Greenwich Village.

Making It In America?

02/08/2012 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

A working-class Jewish family struggling to make ends meet. A gangster uncle newly arrived from Russia. Conflicts between immigrant parents and their more Americanized children. It all sounds a lot like the early-20th century world of Samson Raphaelson’s “The Jazz Singer” or Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers.”